Steaks cooked in the microwave are better, says scientist: 'The ideal way'

Publish date: 2024-07-22

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This is high steaks cooking.

Got beef? Nuke it: A scientist says it’s best to pop that bad boy directly into a lazy chef’s preferred household appliance. 

“It’s always a good idea to heat the meat first in a microwave,” explained physicist George Vekinis on BBC podcast “Instant Genius.”

“When you cook it directly from the fridge, essentially what you’re doing is not heating up the meat from the inside,” said the researcher, who authored October 2023 tome “Physics in the Kitchen” as a wowing window into the world the food sciences. 

Vekinis, too, discouraged gourmands from salting the cut prior to frying it, telling podcast listeners: “Salt has this osmotic ability to drag out as much water as possible from the meat and you’re going to get tough and inedible … salt must never be put on a steak before frying.”

He added that zapping pricey cuts like ribeye, strip or T-bone in the magnetronic appliance is a brief, yet crucial step in preparing prime beef. 

“Put it in the microwave for one or two minutes  — depends on the thickness of the meat,” the grub guru advised. 

Physicist George Vekini says preheating a steak in the microwave is the best way to ensure a perfect cook. After that, he suggests popping into the frying pan for a minute, cooking it to medium-rare perfection. davidchukalexey – stock.adobe.com

“Then you fry it quickly, a very short time, as short time as possible, just to give it that little bit of reaction on the surface,” he said, adding that the searing process shouldn’t exceed 60 seconds, “just fry it on both sides as little as possible.”

“The temperature inside the meat should reach at least [131 to 140 degrees Fahrenheit] and that’s absolutely minimum,” said Vekinis, “so, you get this slight aroma and pleasure of the taste.”

And beef buffs who heed his sage wisdom will be seeing red. 

“The ideal way of eating the meat is medium rare, so it’s going to be slightly red and cooked on the outside,” Vekinis said. “The only way to be absolutely sure of that is that you either start with a thin piece of meat or you have a thicker piece of meat that has been heated properly internally with microwaves.”

Vekini’s frying tips aside, the majority of Americans would rather have a steak fresh off of the grill. stock.adobe.com

But steak tastemakers with a taste for flame-broiled beef would likely beg to differ. 

In fact, a 2020 survey commissioned by the National Cattleman’s Beef Association found that a whopping 57% of meatheads in the US prefer their chops grilled over fried or smoked.  

And British company Seergrills, who recently rolled out the world’s “first AI-powered grill,” cuts out manual labor all together, creating the “perfect” steak via specialized technology in less than 90 seconds. 

Gordon Ramsay, the no-nonsense restaurateur best know for telling wannabe cooks to “f—k off” when they make boneheaded mistakes in the kitchen, racked up over 2.7 million YouTube views on his “perfect steak” make in March. 

Seergrills introduced its AI-powered grill in October. Maliflower73 – stock.adobe.com

Rather than buzzing his bone-in rib-eye in a microwave — as Vekinis might have suggested — the badass Brit let the meat thaw on the counter for 15 minutes, seasoned with a sprinkle of salt before frying and let it baste in a hot pan for several minutes. 

Ramsay proudly praised his pleasantly-plated finished product as “beautiful,”  “stunning,” and “delicious.”

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